Deciding whether to reaffirm a NSF debt

[Lavelle1997]

I have a question, but I will start with the scenario first. Some of you may be familiar with my situation in previous posts.

I have two accounts one from NCB & a collections agency. The one from the collections agency involves a NSF in the amout of $947. It is listed under bankruptcy and scheduled to be discharged next week.

Is this debt even worth attempting to reaffirm??? I have read on here that NSF or bad checks can get discharged, but can still be subject to being prosecuted.

Is it truly worth leaving it alone and forgetting about it. My lawyer is unsure what to do. I would think the agency would file an objection, but I guess not.

What are your thoughts. Have any of you being prosecuted for NSF after you BK was discharged?

Thanks

[HHM]

What was the context in which the NSF Checks were written...were these payday loan, post-dated checks, or did you write a check to, for example, a grocery store, and it bounced.

Honestly, if you could have been prosecuted, you would have by now because it is the easiest and least costly way for the merchant to get their money back.

[Lavelle1997]

Deciding whether to reaffirm a NSF debt

The debt was for auto repairs. I have a 01 Ford Focus that caught fire in August 2006. I had a rental while my car was being worked on for about two weeks.

My insurance paid about 60% of the bill, which was approx. $2200. I had the repair done at a Ford Dealership. I wrote them a check for approx. $947. At the time, I had almost $1000.

However, the check ended up bouncing and have been unable to pay it back. It soon went to collections and tried to set up some payment arrangements, but these jerks refused, so I left it alone and filed it in my BK.

Like you said, if they were going to prosecute, I suspect they would have done it by now since its been almost a year.

Thanks

[LostOne0069]

The debt was for auto repairs. I have a 01 Ford Focus that caught fire in August 2006. I had a rental while my car was being worked on for about two weeks.

My insurance paid about 60% of the bill, which was approx. $2200. I had the repair done at a Ford Dealership. I wrote them a check for approx. $947. At the time, I had almost $1000.

However, the check ended up bouncing and have been unable to pay it back. It soon went to collections and tried to set up some payment arrangements, but these jerks refused, so I left it alone and filed it in my BK.

Like you said, if they were going to prosecute, I suspect they would have done it by now since its been almost a year.

Thanks

You don't have to worry about the repair shop, once it's discharged then THEY have no leg to stand on as you don't owe it anymore.

As for prosecution, it just isn't going to happen. Unless you've got a history of writing bad checks or it was a flagrant, obvious situation where you knew you didn't have the money in your account, the DA won't touch it. Remember, they have to prove you KNEW that it was a bad check when you wrote it.

It's only illegal to KNOWINGLY write a bad check. If there's no way to prove you knowingly bounced the check then there's no way that they'll prosecute you.

[CindyLou]

Ummmm, well, you can ask my husband about that ..... he wrote a check for 500.00 for car repairs. Check bounced becauase ex had emptied account to pay veternarian bill! Police on door step in 6 weeks. He did get notice of the charges, but had no way to pay them so ignored it. Never wrote a bad check before! The only thing I would say about the case in this post is that if they were going to press charges then they wouldn't have sent to collections and they would have done so by now. Enough time has passed. The main point is that reaffirming won't really matter. I would include them in the BK. If they decide to press charges there is nothing saying you can't then pay them. You can call the DA's office in the county where the check was written and ask them if you have any pending charges related to bad checks. If you do not then I would stop worrying about it. Enough time has passed. I would not reaffirm.

[FilingOnMyOwn]

It may vary by state, but when I was prosecuted for bounced checks they had to do it within 90 days. The court sent me a bill that basically said pay this amount or goto jail. Now that was a fast decision.